Australian news, and some related international items

All around the world, Assange’s treatment seems to have given the green light to governments to intimidate and hassle journalists. Australian police, for instance, recently conducted a raid on journalist Annika Smethurst’s home. Smethurst had not long before that revealed that the Government had been secretly requesting permission to spy on its own citizens.

If you are waiting for corporate media pundits to defend freedom of the press, you’re going to be disappointed.

The role of journalism in a democracy is publishing information that holds the powerful to account — the kind of information that empowers the public to become more engaged citizens in their communities so that we can vote in representatives that work in the interest of “we the people.”

There is perhaps no better example of watchdog journalism that holds the powerful to account and exposes their corruption than that of WikiLeaks, which exposed to the world evidence of widespread war crimes the U.S. military was committing in Iraq, including the killing of two Reuters journalists; showed that the U.S. Government and large corporations were using private intelligence agencies to spy on activists and protesters; and revealed how the military hid tortured Guantanamo Bay prisoners from Red Cross inspectors.

It’s this kind of real journalism that America’s First Amendment was meant to protect but engaging in it has instead made WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange the target of a massive smear campaign for the last several years — including false claims that Assange is working with Vladimir Putin and the Russians and hackers, as well as open calls by corporate media pundits for him to be assassinated. Continue reading →

Today, in further flagrant and conscious censorship, no British, Australian or American newspaper is carrying a report on Waters’ initiative and the rally.

Roger Waters and John Pilger make powerful defence of Julian Assange in London, WSWS 3 September 2019

Up to 1,000 people gathered last night in central London to hear internationally acclaimed musician Roger Waters deliver a musical tribute to imprisoned WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange.

Performing outside the UK Home Office, just miles from Belmarsh Prison where Assange is being held as a Category A prisoner, Waters sang Pink Floyd’s iconic song “Wish You Were Here.” He was accompanied by guitarist Andrew Fairweather Low.

Supporters filled the forecourt and pavement on both sides of Marsham Street, many carrying banners and placards demanding Assange’s freedom and the release of imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Spontaneous chants rang out, “Free, Free Julian Assange!” and “There’s only one decision: No extradition!”

John Pilger, a veteran filmmaker and investigative journalist and a personal friend of Assange, opened the event with an impassioned speech. Pointing in the direction of the Home Office, Pilger told the crowd: “The behaviour of the British government towards Julian Assange is a disgrace. A profanity on the very notion of human rights. It’s no exaggeration to say that the treatment and persecution of Julian Assange is the way that dictatorships treat a political prisoner.”

John Pilger, a veteran filmmaker and investigative journalist and a personal friend of Assange, opened the event with an impassioned speech. Pointing in the direction of the Home Office, Pilger told the crowd: “The behaviour of the British government towards Julian Assange is a disgrace. A profanity on the very notion of human rights. It’s no exaggeration to say that the treatment and persecution of Julian Assange is the way that dictatorships treat a political prisoner.”………

Pilger warned that Assange’s condition was a matter of grave concern. “I worry a great deal about him if he spends many months in Belmarsh,” he said. “The regime there is imposing a kind of isolation on him that is deeply psychologically wounding. He’s in a small cell in the hospital ward. They seem not to know what to do with him. Of course, what they should be doing is letting him out. He certainly should not be in a maximum-security prison.”…….

Underscoring the point made by Kristinn Hrafnsson about the mainstream media, no major British television station reported on the event on their evening news broadcasts. Today, in further flagrant and conscious censorship, no British, Australian or American newspaper is carrying a report on Waters’ initiative and the rally.

Via social media and publications such as the WSWS, however, reports and video of Waters’ performance, Pilgers’ speech and the statements of Gabriel Shipton are circulating widely and will be viewed by hundreds of thousands of people internationally over the coming days.

John Quiggin’s reply to the AFR’s misleading headline, and Aaron Patrick’s article:

“This is a typical gotcha from Aaron Patrick. My view is that, if we could get a substantial carbon price (at least $50/tonne) now, it would be worth removing the existing nuclear ban. As I’ve written elsewhere, nuclear power can’t get started here for at least 20 years, and in the meantime renewables would wipe out all coal and most gas.”

Left-wing economist John Quiggin has urged the NSW Parliament to legalise nuclear power, making the University of Queensland academic the most prominent environmentalist to support the controversial energy source.

Economist John Quiggin supports nuclear power. [?]

Professor Quiggin told a NSW parliamentary inquiry into uranium mining and nuclear power that the ban should be lifted simultaneously with the introduction of a price charged for emitting Greenhouse gases.

“The Parliament should pass a motion … removing the existing ban on nuclear power,” he said in a written submission. “Nuclear power is not viable in the absence of a carbon price.”

The inquiry, one of three similar under way, is seen by some Coalition MPs as the start of a long process of convincing voters to support nuclear reactors to replace the state’s ageing coal power stations, including Liddell in the Hunter Valley, which is due to close after the summer of 2023……..

The Minerals Council of Australia, a lobby group, successfully pushed for a federal parliamentary inquiry into nuclear, which is examining the feasibility of a new generation of compact power plants that are meant to be safer and much cheaper than the huge stations that supply about 11 per cent of the world’s electricity……..

The NSW inquiry is the result of a private members bill introduced by state One Nation leader Mark Latham that would allow uranium mining. Nuclear power is banned in NSW under federal and state regulations…….

The biggest impediment to development of the industry is opposition from the Labor and Greens parties, environmental groups and left-wing think tanks such as The Australia Institute.

The conditional support of left-wing academics such as Professor Quiggin could, over time, lessen opposition to nuclear power, which supporters say could be used as a back up for wind and solar power.

In Victoria a parliamentary inquiry began two weeks ago at the request of a Liberal Democrat MP, David Limbrick.

The 12-month inquiry will explore if nuclear energy would be feasible and suitable for Victoria in the future, and consider waste management, health and safety and industrial and medical applications, AAP reported.

Aaron Patrick is The Australian Financial Review’s Senior Correspondent. He writes about politics and business. Connect with Aaron on Twitter. Email Aaron at apatrick@afr.com.au

There’s lots of misinformation in Patrick’s articles. For example he uncritically promotes a dopey Industry Super Australia report, described by RenewEconomy editor Giles Parkinson as “one of the most inept analyses of the energy industry that has been produced in Australia”. (I’ve asked the authors of the Industry Super report if they intend to withdraw or amend it. No response.)

The focus here ‒ and the focus of Patrick’s recent articles ‒ is on small modular reactors (SMRs), which he describes as new, small, safe, cheap and exciting (and he continues to make such claims even as I continue to feed him with evidence suggesting alternative SMR adjectives … non-existent, overhyped, obscenely expensive).

Some history is useful in assessing Patrick’s claims. There’s a long history of small reactors being used for naval propulsion, but every effort to develop land-based SMRs has ended in tears. Academic M.V. Ramana concludes an analysis of the history of SMRs thus:

“Sadly, the nuclear industry continues to practice selective remembrance and to push ideas that haven’t worked. Once again, we see history repeating itself in today’s claims for small reactors ‒ that the demand will be large, that they will be cheap and quick to construct.

“But nothing in the history of small nuclear reactors suggests that they would be more economical than full-size ones. In fact, the record is pretty clear: Without exception, small reactors cost too much for the little electricity they produced, the result of both their low output and their poor performance. …

“Worse, attempts to make them cheaper might end up exacerbating nuclear power’s other problems: production of long-lived radioactive waste, linkage with nuclear weapons, and the occasional catastrophic accident.”

Patrick quotes an SMR company representative saying that SMRs have been “researched and developed for the best part of 50 years”. Fine … but surely AFR readers ought to be informed that every single attempt to commercialise SMRs over the past 50 years has failed.

According to the Coalition’s energy spokesperson (p.34), “new-generation reactors with maximum safety features are now coming into use”. That was 30 years ago, and the spokesperson was Peter McGauran.

A wave of enthusiasm for SMRs came and went without a single SMR being built anywhere in the world, and there’s no reason to believe the current wave of enthusiasm will be more fruitful.

Diseconomies of scale

Interest in SMRs derives primarily from what they are not: large reactor projects which have been prone to catastrophic cost overruns and delays. Cost estimates for all reactors under construction in western Europe and north America range from A$17.5 billion to A$24 billion, and the twin-reactor V.C.

Summer project in South Carolina was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least A$13 billion, forcing Westinghouse into bankruptcy and almost bankrupting its parent company Toshiba.

But SMRs will cost more (per megawatt and megawatt-hour) because of diseconomies of scale: a 250MW SMR will generate 25 per cent as much power as a 1,000MW reactor, but it will require more than 25 per cent of the material inputs and staffing, and a number of other costs including waste management and decommissioning will be proportionally higher.

Aaron Patrick claims in the AFR that SMRs are “likely” to be installed in North America and Europe. No, they aren’t. William Von Hoene, senior vice-president at Exelon ‒ the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the US ‒ said last year: “Right now, the costs on the SMRs, in part because of the size and in part because of the security that’s associated with any nuclear plant, are prohibitive.”

The prevailing scepticism is evident in a 2017 Lloyd’s Register report based on the insights of almost 600 professionals and experts from utilities, distributors, operators and equipment manufacturers. They predict that SMRs have a “low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive”.

Likewise, American Nuclear Society consultant Will Davis said in 2014 that the SMR “universe [is] rife with press releases, but devoid of new concrete.”

And a 2014 report produced by Nuclear Energy Insider, drawing on interviews with more than 50 “leading specialists and decision makers”, noted a “pervasive sense of pessimism” resulting from abandoned and scaled-back SMR programs.

Independent economic assessments

SMRs are “leading the way in cost” according to Tania Constable from the Minerals Council of Australia. NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro claims that SMRs “are becoming very affordable”.

But every independent economic assessment finds that electricity from SMRs will be more expensive than that from large reactors.

A study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff prepared for the 2015/16 South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission estimated costs of US$127‒130 per megawatt-hour (MWh) for large reactors, compared to US$140‒159 for SMRs. The Royal Commission’s final report identified numerous hurdles and uncertainties facing SMRs.

A December 2018 report by CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator concluded that “solar and wind generation technologies are currently the lowest-cost ways to generate electricity for Australia, compared to any other new-build technology.”

It found that electricity from SMRs would be more than twice as expensive as that from wind or solar power with storage costs included (two hours of battery storage or six hours of pumped hydro storage).

A report by the consultancy firm Atkins for the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy found that electricity from the first SMR in the UK would be 30 percent more expensive than that from large reactors, because of diseconomies of scale and the costs of deploying first-of-a-kind technology.

A 2015 report by the International Energy Agency and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency predicted that electricity from SMRs will be 50−100 percent more expensive than that from large reactors, although it holds out some hope that large-volume factory production could reduce costs.

An article by four pro-nuclear researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy, published in 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, considered options for the development of an SMR industry in the US.

They concluded that it would not be viable unless the industry received “several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies” over the next several decades. That’s billion with a ‘b’: several hundred billion dollars.

SMR corpses and a negative learning curve on steroids

A handful of SMRs are under construction, all by state nuclear agencies in Russia, China and Argentina. Most or all of them are over-budget and behind schedule. None are factory built (the essence of the concept of modular reactors) and none are the least bit promising.

China and Argentina hope to develop an export market for their SMRs, but so far all they can point to are partially-built prototypes that have been subject to major cost overruns and delays. South Korea won’t build any of its ‘SMART’ SMRs domestically, not even a prototype, but nevertheless hopes to establish an export market.

Alarmingly, about half of the SMRs under construction are intended to facilitate the exploitation of fossil fuel reserves in the Arctic, the South China Sea and elsewhere (Russia’s floating power plant, Russia’s RITM-200 icebreaker ships, and China’s ACPR50S demonstration reactor).

Recent history is littered with SMR corpses (none of them mentioned in Patrick’s articles in the AFR).

The Generation mPower project in the US was abandoned. Transatomic Power gave up on its molten salt reactor R&D. MidAmerican Energy gave up on its plans for SMRs after failing to secure legislation that would force rate-payers to part-pay construction costs. Westinghouse sharply reduced its investment in SMRs after failing to secure US government funding.

Patrick mentions Rolls-Royce’s SMR plans in the AFR, but he doesn’t note that Rolls-Royce scaled back its investment to “a handful of salaries” and is threatening to abandon its R&D altogether unless massive grants are forthcoming from the British government.

Rolls-Royce estimates that Australian demand for SMRs could reach 2,000 megawatts of capacity, Patrick informs AFR readers. So SMRs could supply a very small fraction of Australia’s electricity demand according to a company with skin in the game … gee whiz.

In yet another propaganda piece, titled ‘The Rolls-Royce option for Australian nuclear power’, Patrick regurgitates Rolls-Royce’s claim that it could build an SMR in Australia for “only £1.5 billion ($2.7 billion)”. No information is provided regarding the capacity of the proposed reactor, so the dollar figure is meaningless.

Surely readers of the Financial Review would expect at least some basic economic literacy from the paper’s Senior Correspondent?

Patrick cites an SMR company representative who claims that costs will become more competitive over time. Let’s compare that speculative claim to a real-world example.In 2004, when Argentina’s CAREM SMR was in the planning stage, the Bariloche Atomic Center estimatedan overnight cost of US$1 billion / gigawatt (GW) for an integrated 300 MW plant.

By April 2017, with construction underway, the costhad increased to a staggering US$21.9 billion / GW. The project is years behind schedule and years from completion, so costs will increase further. It’s a negative learning curve on steroids.

NuScale’s creative accounting

The US company NuScale Power is the Next Big Thing in the SMR universe, if only because so many other projects have collapsed. NuScale is targeting a cost of US$65 / MWh for its first plant.

But a study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff prepared for the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission estimated a cost of US$159 / MWh based on the NuScale design ‒ that’s 2.4 times higher than NuScale’s estimate.

Lazard estimates costs of US$112‒189 / MWh for electricity from large nuclear plants. NuScale’s claim that its electricity will be 2‒3 times cheaper than that from large nuclear plants is implausible.

And even if NuScale achieved costs of US$65 / MWh, that would still be higher than Lazard’s figures for wind power (US$29‒56) and utility-scale solar (US$36‒46).

Likewise, NuScale’s construction cost estimate of US$4.2 billion / GW is implausible. The latest cost estimate for the two AP1000 reactors under construction in the US state of Georgia (the only reactors under construction in the US) is US$12.3‒13.6 billion / GW.

NuScale wants us to believe that it will build SMRs at one-third of that cost, despite the unavoidable diseconomies of scale and despite the fact that every independent assessment concludes that SMRs will be more expensive to build (per GW) than large reactors.

No-one wants to pay for SMRs

No company, utility, consortium or national government is seriously considering building the massive supply chain that is the very essence of SMRs ‒ mass, modular factory construction. Yet without that supply chain, SMRs will be expensive curiosities.

In early 2019, Kevin Anderson, North American Project Director for Nuclear Energy Insider, said that there “is unprecedented growth in companies proposing design alternatives for the future of nuclear, but precious little progress in terms of market-ready solutions.”

Anderson argued that it is time to convince investors that the SMR sector is ready for scale-up financing but that it will not be easy: “Even for those sympathetic, the collapse of projects such as V.C. Summer does little to convince financiers that this sector is mature and competent enough to deliver investable projects on time and at cost.”

Dr. Ziggy Switkowski ‒ who headed the Howard Government’s nuclear review in 2006 ‒ recently made a similar point. “Nobody’s putting their money up” to build SMRs, he noted, and thus “it is largely a debate for intellects and advocates because neither generators nor investors are interested because of the risk.”

Switkowski made those comments in an interview with the AFR’s Phil Coorey. But Aaron Patrick doesn’t give AFR readers any sense that SMRs will struggle to get off the ground given the profound reluctance to invest. Current investments ‒ from the private sector and national governments ‒ are orders of magnitude less than would be required to kick-start an SMR industry.

A 2018 US Department of Energy report states that about US$10 billion of government subsidies would be needed to deploy 6 GW of SMR capacity by 2035. But there’s no likelihood that the US government will subsidise the industry to that extent.

To date, the US government has offered US$452 million to support private-sector SMR projects, of which US$111 million was wasted on the mPower project that was abandoned in 2017.

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories has set the goal of siting a demonstration SMR at its Chalk River site by 2026. But serious discussions about paying for a demonstration SMR ‒ let alone a fleet of SMRs ‒ have not yet begun. The Canadian SMR Roadmap website simply states: “Appropriate risk sharing among governments, power utilities and industry will be necessary for SMR demonstration and deployment in Canada.”

In 2018, the UK Government agreed to provide £56 million towards the development and licensing of advanced modular reactor designs and £32 million towards advanced manufacturing research.

This year, the UK Government announced that it may provide up to £18 million to a consortium to help build a demonstration SMR, and up to £45 million to be invested in the second phase of the Advanced Modular Reactor program.

But those government grants are small change: companies seeking to pursue SMR projects in the UK want several billion pounds from the government to build a prototype SMR. “It’s a pretty half-hearted, incredibly British, not-quite-good-enough approach,” one industry insider said.

Another questioned the credibility of SMR developers in the UK: “Almost none of them have got more than a back of a fag packet design drawn with a felt tip.”

Federal inquiry ‒ get your submission in

The Committee is controlled by Coalition MPs and they need all the education we can offer them ‒ about the whole suite of energy options, not just nuclear power and SMRs ‒ so get your submission in by September 16.

Thorium ‘more environmentally friendly and safer’ than nuclearhttps://www.news.com.au/video/id-5348771529001-6074698767001/thorium-more-environmentally-friendly-and-safer-than-nuclear August 20th 2019
Sky News host Alan Jones explains the element thorium, which is “seen by many as more environmentally friendly” than nuclear as an energy source. Mr Jones said thorium-based reactors are safer too because the reaction can easily be stopped and produce less waste that is radioactive. “It’s three times as abundant as uranium, we’re told, and there’s enough thorium in the United States alone to power America at its current energy level for a thousand years,” he said. The broadcaster noted that rolling blackouts for smelters and manufacturers has created a “crisis” for the energy market and suggested thorium as a possible answer.

While the Internet was meant to democratise the transmission of information we see a few giant technology companies, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have near total control of what is seen and shared.

The situation is even worse in Australia with two or three media companies and the same technology giants having control. And the Government of Australia has granted them ever wider market access to extend their monopolies.

Slowly, instance by instance, the malicious and deceitful smears of Julian Assange’s character have been exposed for what they are; an effort to destroy trust in a system of anonymous leaking that will educate everyone.

WikiLeaks’ threat to the powerful was recognised and every effort was, and is, being made to criminalise anonymous leaking, which would be akin to criminalising Gutenberg’s printing press, but there is not much chance this criminalisation will succeed.

It’s time to bring Julian Assange home. Torturing and punishing him has never been legitimate and serves absolutely no purpose.

Media dead silent as Wikileaks insider explodes the myths around Julian Assange, Michael West, by Greg Bean — 16 August 2019– It is the journalists from The Guardian and New York Times who should be in jail, not Julian Assange, said Mark Davis last week. The veteran Australian investigative journalist, who has been intimately involved in the Wikileaks drama, has turned the Assange narrative on its head. The smears are falling away. The mainstream media, which has so ruthlessly made Julian Assange a scapegoat, is silent in response.

Greg Bean likens the revolutionary work of Julian Assange to that of Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press. Government reaction, 580 years later, is similarly savage.

Five hundred and eighty years ago, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press to the world. That single act created a free press which gave birth to the concept of freedom of speech. The two are inextricably linked; printing is a form of speech.

Gutenberg’s invention started the Printing Revolution, a milestone of the 2ndmillennium that initiated the modern period of human history including the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution, and began the knowledge-based economy that spread learning to the masses.

Such mass communication permanently altered the structure of society. Removing control of information from the hands of the powerful and delivering it into the hands of the disempowered…….

Australia’s Energy Minister Angus Taylor has asked the House Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy to investigate the nuclear fuel cycle, Committee Chairman Ted O’Brien announced today

“This will be the first inquiry into the use of nuclear energy in Australia in more than a decade and I believe it’s the first time the Australian Parliament has ever undertaken such an inquiry,” O’Brien, who is Member of Parliament for Fairfax in Queensland, said. He will be tasked with leading the inquiry after the ministerial request is considered and adopted by the committee.

In a letter to O’Brien, Taylor said the inquiry will consider the economic, environmental and safety implications of nuclear power. The minister has specifically asked the committee to inquire into and report on “the circumstances and prerequisites necessary for any future government’s consideration of nuclear energy generation including small modular reactor technologies in Australia”.

“Australia’s energy systems are changing with new technologies, changing consumer demand patterns and changes in demand load from major industries,” the context for the inquiry notes. “At the same time the National Electricity Market is seeing a significant increase in capacity in intermittent low emissions generation technologies.” The country’s bipartisan moratorium on nuclear electricity generation – which has been maintained by successive Labor and Coalition governments – will remain in place, it said.

The inquiry will have regard to previous inquiries into the nuclear fuel cycle, including South Australia’s 2016 Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission and the 2006 Review of Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy in Australia, which is also known as the Switkowski report after its lead author Ziggy Switkowski.

The minister has requested that the committee completes the inquiry and delivers its report by the end of this year.

ABC board: secret shortlist of candidates ignored in favour of mining executive revealed
Documents show Coalition government passed over some of Australia’s most eminent cultural figures to appoint Vanessa Guthrie, Guardian, Margaret Simons, Sat 3 Aug 2019 The government passed over some of Australia’s most eminent cultural figures in order to appoint a mining executive to the ABC board in 2017, despite the fact that she was not recommended by an independent selection process.Documents released under freedom of information legislation show that in February 2017, the government rejected singer, writer and director Robyn Archer, former managing director of SBS Shaun Brown, and Sandra Levy, former chief executive of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

They were on a list of eight names recommended by an independent nomination panel after an extensive application and vetting process. The then communications minister, Mitch Fifield, instead appointed the chair of the Minerals Council of Australia, Vanessa Guthrie.

Guthrie had no media experience. At the time, the ABC was facing constant government criticism over its reporting on the coalmining industry and energy security.

Guthrie had also been through the application process but was not recommended for appointment. Fifield’s press release at the time said that while Guthrie had not been recommended, she “was identified by the government as having the requisite skills”.

However, until now, we have not known who was passed over in Guthrie’s favour.

Robyn Archer – singer, writer, director and public advocate for the arts, as well as the former artistic director of the Adelaide and Melbourne international arts festivals.

• Shaun Brown – former managing director of SBS for four years from 2006. Before that, a reporter, presenter, producer and senior executive with Television New Zealand.

• Sandra Levy – former CEO of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, former head of drama at Zapruder’s Other Films, former director of development at Channel Nine and, before that, director of television at the ABC.

• Emile Sherman – Academy award-winning film producer, known for his work on the films The Kings Speech, Lion and Shame. Co-founder and managing director of See-Saw Films.

• Tim Reed – CEO of the business software company MYOB.

• John M Green – publisher, novelist, former executive director of an investment bank, business writer and commentator, member of the governing council of the National Library of Australia.

Georgie Somerset was also on the list recommended by the board, and was appointed with Guthrie. She is a Queensland cattle farmer with board experience across the not-for-profit sector.

An eighth recommended person’s name has not been released at their request. …….

Out of the current nine-member ABC board, five were appointed by the government despite not being recommended through the independent process. As well as Buttrose and Guthrie, the others are company director Dr Kirstin Ferguson (appointed 2015), businesswoman Donny Walford (2015) and businessman Joseph Gersh (2018).

Today the Senate voted for an inquiry into press freedom and whistle-blower protection showing that there are some in our Parliament who care about a frank and fearless media.
This week’s arrest of four French journalists highlights how badly we need to rethink press freedom in Australia.

This inquiry will get to the bottom of what has gone on and ensure a future for a free press in Australia.”

Adani protest: French journalists arrested while filming anti-coal activities, Guardian
Journalists charged with trespassing after filming Frontline Action on Coal activists include Hugo Clément, Ben Smee@BenSmee, Mon 22 Jul 2019 Four journalists working for the public television network France 2 have been charged with trespassing for filming a protest near the Abbot Point coal terminal, in north Queensland, targeting the operations of the Adani group.

The group of journalists includes Hugo Clément, a reporter well known in France for his documentaries about climate change and environmental issues.

Clément and a crew were arrested while filming anti-coal activists from the group Frontline Action on Coal, which early on Monday morning set up a blockade outside the Abbot Point port. About 20 members of the environmental group gathered outside the port entrance from 7am. Two locked themselves to a concrete barrel on the roadway.

In a statement Frontline Action on Coal said Clément and others were told by police they were “obstructing the railway” while filming the protests.

“Without warning, all four Frenchmen were immediately placed in handcuffs and put into police vehicles,” the statement said.

The group was taken to a police station in the nearby town of Bowen. They were released on bail on Monday afternoon and ordered to face the local magistrates court in September.

Clément said he spent several hours in a cell after being arrested while filming a protest, which included two demonstrators locking their hands inside a concrete barrel.

“We were just filming the action at the blockade of the highway and police came straight to us and arrested us without a word, without saying anything,” Clément said.
“They took us into a cell for seven hours.”

He said he and his crew, who work for French public broadcaster France 2, were charged with trespassing and released on conditional bail, which included that they not go within 20km of the Carmichael site.

“We didn’t understand why they arrested us because we weren’t doing anything wrong, we were just doing our jobs by filming the action,” he said.

AFP emails shed new light on media investigations, show officers were armed during raids, SMH, By Kylar Loussikian and Bevan Shields, July 5, 2019 The Australian Federal Police initially classified its investigation into a high-profile national security leak as “routine” and of “low value”, according to a cache of documents that also reveals police were armed when they launched two recent raids on the media.

Emails obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age under freedom of information laws also offer fresh evidence that Annika Smethurst, a senior member of the Canberra press gallery, could be prosecuted for publishing secret government information.

The AFP is expected to be called before a parliamentary inquiry to explain the chain of events leading to raids in early June on Smethurst’s Canberra home and the Sydney headquarters of the ABC over separate stories based on sensitive and secret government information.

The nuclear energy option A new paper undermines the claim it’s more about culture wars than electricity generation. THE AUSTRALIAN , By GRAHAM LLOYD , 4 July 19, “……….. A discussion paper prepared for the union-backed Industry Super Australia provides a blueprint for patient capital in the energy sector.

……….The view globally is that nuclear power provides the best emissions-free hedge against a failure of renewables to satisfy more than about one-third of a nation’s energy requirements.

Ed. the view globally – whose view exactly?

The Prime Minister is being urged to give his blessing to a review of the potential for nuclear energy in Australia.

Queensland MPs Keith Pitt and James McGrath have proposed terms of reference for an inquiry that will review advances in nuclear energy including small nuclear reactors and thorium.

The NSW parliament will conduct its own review.

One Nation MLC Mark Latham has legislation before parliament to legalise uranium mining and nuclear facilities.

NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro has called for a national vote to end the ban and says the northern cities of Tamworth or Armidale could be the site of a new nuclear power station.

Scott Morrison says he won’t oppose nuclear if the economics stack up but no one is offering to build a reactor in Australia.

Advocates of the nuclear option are playing a long-term game.

In April, OECD Nuclear Energy Agency director general William Magwood made his first official visit to Australia. He met the energy ministry, the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Energy Policy Institute of Australia……

Magwood’s discussions highlighted uranium resource issues but also focused on NEA analyses related to the decarbonisation of electricity systems and radioactive waste management.

While Australia has no plans to build nuclear plants, in 2016 the country joined the Generation IV International Forum, for which the Nuclear Energy Agency acts as technical secretariat.

Ed note: Let us not forget that nuclear industry law-unto-himself Dr Adi Paterson signed Australia up to this with no Parliamentary discussion and no government authorisation . A month later a senate committee ratified this – still no parliamentary discussion, despite the fact that Australa has laws against constructing nuclear reactors.

Magwood’s talks with Australian authorities included the latest research and development on advanced nuclear systems………

One of the themes of the discussion paper is that mainstream thinking on the energy market may be misleading in many areas…….Ultimately, there is the prospect that some wind and solar projects themselves may become stranded assets.

The problems of intermittency are at the heart of global concerns. Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor is trying to address the issue with a reliability obligation for generators………

nuclear has advantages that intermittent sources of energy cannot provide.

And a recent OECD report assesses the levelised cost using a 3 per cent interest rate at $US100 per megawatt hour for commercial solar, $US70 per megawatt hour for onshore wind and $US50 a megawatt for nuclear………..

Ed. note. Really – source?

Australia lagging

It was noted that Australia is one of the few First World economies without nuclear power and experience in managing a nuclear plant…….

Not considering nuclear puts Australia in the minority of First World economies. It is also lagging several Second and Third World economies in our region and elsewhere such as Argentina, Mexico, Bangladesh and Turkey and geographical neighbours such as ­Indonesia and Vietnam…….

Based on the Tesla battery in Adelaide, achieving 1½ days’ energy storage would cost $6.5 trillion, enough to build about 1000 nuclear reactors.

For household batteries, it would cost about $US7000 per household every 10 years to provide back-up for 36 hours……..

One important step would be to build some capacity to operate a nuclear facility.

This would provide insurance against failure in alternative options or rapid change in technology.

Extinction Nation: Four Corners program raises environmental questions, Independent Australia, By Sue Arnold | 28 June 2019 A recent Four Corners interview with Environment Minister Sussan Ley failed to ask some of the more critical questions, writes Sue Arnold.

FOUR CORNERS:Extinction Nation portrayed a vivid picture of outrageous environmental damage in Victoria and Tasmania — a timely program which barely touched the critical issues.

Of particular concern was the failure of reporter Stephanie March to ask the new Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley, the most relevant questions in relation to Australia’s ongoing appalling loss of biodiversity and wildlife. Why she allowed Ley to get away with blaming the states is more than curious.

The ABC’s Media Watch program last night took aim at Australia’s pro-nuclear propagandists and the extreme bias of Australia’s nuclear ‘debate’.

Media Watch discussed HBO’s hit miniseries ‘Chernobyl’, which tops IMDB’s list of the greatest TV shows of all time, and took aim at Andrew Bolt and others for trivialising the death toll (discussed here) and for ignoring the broader impacts of the disaster such as the permanent relocation of 350,000 people and the thousands of children who suffered thyroid cancer due to exposure to radioactive fallout.

Dr Jim Green, national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia, said: “Nuclear lobbyists argued that Chernobyl was a result of the dysfunctional Soviet system and that a similar disaster couldn’t happen in Western countries. That argument collapsed with the March 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. Nuclear disasters can happen anywhere and a nuclear disaster anywhere is a nuclear disaster everywhere due to the spread of radioactive fallout. Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout contaminated the whole of Europe and Fukushima fallout reached northern Australia.”

“In addition to their other devastating impacts, nuclear disasters greatly increase the overall cost of nuclear power. The cost of the Chernobyl disaster is estimated at over one trillion dollars [US$700 billion] and the Fukushima disaster could prove to be just as expensive.”

Citing a recent expert analysis, Media Watch noted that nuclear power “doesn’t even get to first base on cost” and took nuclear lobbyists to task for failing to acknowledge the extraordinarily high cost of nuclear power (all reactors under construction in western Europe and north America are estimated to cost $14‒24 billion each while the South Carolina reactor project was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least A$12.9 billion).

Dr Green said: “Dr Ziggy Switkowski used to be Australia’s most prominent supporter of nuclear power and he led the Howard government’s nuclear review in 2006. But nuclear costs have increased four-fold since then and Dr Switkowski has acknowledged that the window for large-scale nuclear power in Australia has closed as renewables are clearly cheaper.“

“John Howard was no anti-nuclear ideologue yet he had the good sense to ban nuclear power. Prime Minister Scott Morrison needs to state unambiguously that the legislation banning nuclear power in Australia will remain in place,” Dr Green concluded.

FEDERALSubmissions about the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Facility in Kimba or the Flinders Ranges. The Standing Committee on Environment and Energy are accepting submissions to the ‘Inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia’ until 16 September 2019. Please write your own submission or use FOE’s online proforma.

Nuclear facilities, including power stations and radioactive waste dumps, are now banned in Queensland.

Nuclear facilities banned under the Act include:

·nuclear reactors (whether used to generate electricity or not);

·uranium conversion and enrichment plants;

·nuclear fuel fabrication plants;

·spent fuel processing plants; and

·facilities used to store or dispose of material associated with the nuclear fuel cycle e.g. radioactive waste material.

Exemptions under the legislation include facilities for the storage or disposal of waste material resulting from research or medical purposes, and the operation of a nuclear-powered vessel.

1 FEDERALSubmissions about the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Facility in Kimba or the Flinders Ranges. The Standing Committee on Environment and Energy are accepting submissions to the ‘Inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia’ until 16 September 2019. Please write your own submission or use FOE’s online proforma.

Australia has long rejected nuclear power, and it is banned in Federal and State laws. The nuclear lobby is out to first repeal those laws, and then to get the Australian government to commit to buying probably large numbers of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) . This could mean first importing plutonium and/or enriched uranium, as some reactor models, (thorium ones) require these to get the fission process started. That would, in effect, mean importing nuclear wastes.

There’s an all-too short period for people to send in Submissions to the 4 Parliamentary Inquiries now in progress.